I make art with pictures of myself and I worry. I try not to but I do. Though my intention is to speak on the steps I take, and my broken toe, I can't help but hear the critique of "baiting" attention with hyper specific appendages. Fetishization exists in just about everything. So long as the body is present there will be spectators of certain parts in stock and their subsequent tricks. Artists know this struggle in an intimate yet professional way.
The internal debate of the artist in regards to fetishization stems from the current commentary on natural form. Those who create with physical authenticity are often falsely mistaken for creating within eroticism. Often, the subject turns to the "type of artist" one is "choosing" to be. I received feedback that the literary piece "Tuck Me In" "stood well on its own". Well sure, I know that. But what an irony to accuse the body of being commodity in a work which shames just that.
Many audiences are now incapable of seeing the body as nonfictional. The accusation of "baiting" an audience with sex when discussing autonomy is now a common and ironically inescapable feedback.The natural form being fictionalized has led to anger in creations surrounding nonfictional bodies. The fictional woman is seen so often that the nonfictional is no longer a believable stance. Any discussion of form comes off as a demand to be seen, a commodity plastered on to sell ones work like an ad for beer. When one has seen the fictional form so often, they become incapable of separating the subject of the body from bait. How disturbing is that? Viewing the natural form as a worm on a hook requires a disbelief in nonfiction so rigid that the prefix dissolves in the lake.
Nonfiction then becomes fiction, and fiction is fetish, and first nature becomes a forgotten history. One becomes "that kind of artist", a commodity, a non-credible source in a nonfiction body. I know this all to be true because my toe is broken and I am still standing well on it.
Comments